Monday, October 26, 2009

The RMS Berengaria and the Crash

We’re continuing our Halloween fright fest with something truly scary: the economy. This week marks the 80th anniversary of the 1929 stock market crash whose repercussions changed this country and a good part of the world. The above famous headline in Variety, devoted to stage and film, put the matter succinctly and with typical panache. Other papers were grappling with 72-point type headlines that attempted to dramatize numbers of shares sold, points in decline, value lost. Variety summed up the whole nightmare in show-biz terms.

What makes this anniversary special is the similarities people, and pundits, may choose to draw between our current economic challenges and those of eight decades ago. It makes the anniversary more dramatic, to be sure, but perhaps it will give us something more than entertaining intrigue. Possibly, it might give us more understanding about the whole grisly matter, and more empathy for a generation that lost everything.

On Thursday we’ll mark the finale of the fiasco, the so-called “Black Tuesday” event (There was, you’ll remember, Black Thursday, Black Friday, Black Monday, and Black Tuesday) with a look at “The Roaring Twenties” (1939), a fascinating and well-made film that attempts to look back on the event with an objective if nostalgic eye. We may have even better perspective now.

Today, let’s have a brief look at one episode of the 1929 stock market crash that says something about the quirkiness of the Roaring Twenties, and maybe the inevitability of paying the piper, or judgment day, or just the party being over.

In the musical “Funny Girl” (1967), Barbra Streisand, playing the popular comedienne Fanny Brice, goes along with her lover, played by Omar Sharif, on a ship to Europe. He is a professional gambler and intends to ply his trade among the well-to-do on the ship. The ship they travel on is the grand Cunard ocean liner, the RMS Berengaria.

“You are going to Europe so you can play cards on the boat?!” Miss Streisand asks incredulously. A little card playing was the least of a life of excess at sea.

The Berengaria began its life a product of Imperial Germany as the Imperator, but was turned over to Great Britain after World War I for reparations, where it was renamed and reborn as a favorite among wealthy travelers taking the trans-Atlantic route between Britain and the U.S.

F. Scott Fitzgerald noted in the final pages of his 1922 novel “The Beautiful and the Damned”, where his dissipated Lost Generation poster children, Anthony and Gloria Patch, newly wealthy but their souls destroyed, wander the decks of the Berengaria, “That exquisite heavenly irony which has tabulated the demise of so many generations of sparrows doubtless records verbal inflections of the passengers of such ships as The Berengaria.”

Other passengers, like Vanderbilt, DuPont, Astor, and J. P. Morgan may not have wandered the decks in dissipation, but certainly had a reason for choosing the Berengaria over other ships. In August of 1929, a couple of months before the Crash, the Berengaria instituted a new service. A salon on the promenade deck would become a stock brokerage linked by wireless to Wall Street. No more would bored millionaires struggle to amuse themselves with shuffleboard on the crossing. Now, they could continue to trade stocks during the voyage.

I suppose it was a 1920s version of people who just cannot put down the cell phone or BlackBerry.

During the week of the Crash, the Berengaria had left Europe and was heading to New York. When news of the stocks falling spread across the ship, the brokerage room was barraged by the passengers, all trying to get more information, all trying to sell. Helena Rubinstein, the cosmetics manufacturer, sat in a front row leather armchair to watch the prices continuously chalked on the board, and continuously falling. She lost a million dollars in a couple of hours.

Other millionaires on board that trip docked in New York penniless. A kind of voyage of the damned. They were no less helpless than the people who sweated it out in the nervous crowds gathering in front of the New York Stock Exchange, but they had a better view; if they bothered to leave the brokerage salon and take a stroll on the promenade deck.

It makes a dramatic allegory to the Crash of 1929, including the aftermath. The Berengaria’s fortunes faltered during the Great Depression, was referred to as “Bargain Area” and used for cheap cruises to the Caribbean and Bermuda, but failed to turn a profit. By the end of the 1930s, she was retired and eventually scrapped in the mid-1940s.

A poem parodying the outlandish idea of having a brokerage a ship was published in the Spokane Spokesman-Review, and later the Literary Digest August 31, 1929. It is eerily prescient:

We were crowded in the cabinWatching figures on the Board;It was midnight on the oceanAnd a tempest loudly roared.

We were watching the quotationsWith a certain sad appeal:Some were short in General Motors,Some were long on U.S. Steel.

And, timidly a touristTook a chance on twenty shares --"We are lost!" the Captain shouted,As he staggered down the stairs.

"I've got a tip," he faltered,"Straight by wireless from the auntOf a fellow who's relatedTo a cousin of Durant."

At these awful words we shuddered,And the stoutest bull grew sickWhile the brokers cried, "More margin!"And the ticker ceased to tick.

But the captain's little daughterSaid, "I do not understand --Isn't Morgan on the oceanJust the same as on the land?"

Even the film industry, which ironically did very well during the Depression and proved to be one of the few recession-proof industries (dimes stores was another), suffered a foreboding incident that frightening autumn.

In September 1929 “His Glorious Night” with John Gilbert was released to not only criticism, but howls. The silent-screen lover lost his macho mystique when the audience heard his high, thin voice for the first time. It was indeed an era of new beginnings, new technological marvels, and disastrous endings.

But Mr. Gilbert’s misfortune was Gene Kelly’s gain when the seed was planted for “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952).

By the time that parody was released, the stock market had mostly recovered. It took a couple of decades for those who lost money on their stocks but held onto them to break even. The stock market finally regained its pre-1929 Crash highest level in November 1954 amid a booming economy fueled by consumerism, where the 1929 Crash was starting to fade in memory and fear of it was replaced by either scornful amusement, or total ignorance, for another couple of generations.

“What’s past is prologue” Shakespeare said in “The Tempest.” Come back Thursday for “The Roaring Twenties”. Until then, have a look below at a montage of The Berengaria and the Crash.

10 comments:

Remarkably good--fascinating read, & among the best posts I've read. The story of the Berengeria is absorbing; I'd heard of it, but didn't know its history. I believe that one theory about the 29 Crash is that panic ensued because so much of the general public was involved in the market--the idea being that whereas seasoned market players might wait out a slump, inexperienced folks panicked. There may be some similarities to the situation of the past few years (& arguably, going back to 00-01). A lot of folks played the market in the 90s because it was such a boom time. Tho the slump at the beginning of the Bush presidency may have weeded out the "gun-shy," still the money managers were juggling the money of John & Jane Q Public because so much was invested thru 401Ks & similar plans. This may have had the effect of increasing panic too.

Thanks, John. The causes of the 1929 Crash, and also the Depression, have been debated for generations and likely to continue. The reasons you've mentioned certainly had to a part to play in it. Another was deregulation in the 1920s, a real estate boom and bust (similar to ours), and a rather a lot of cheating and corruption going on in the financial markets (sound familiar?)

But the economy as a whole has some cracks in it that nobody was paying attention to. There were problems in industry, in farming, and in the coal mines (most of the country, both industry and residential, were fueled by coal). In the case of these aspects of our economy, the Crash wasn't so much an instigator of the Depression as a last straw, a sign that things had been quietly messed up for a while.

A fascinating period of history. A lot more fun to look back on than it is try to live through now. Let's hope we all get a grip on our nerves, our wallets, and our futures pretty soon.

P.G. Wodehouse wrote about the giddy rush to get into the market. Everybody was getting rich and everybody had a tip - the barber, the elevator man, the girl at the diner. It was all to easy to get swept up in the whole fiasco waiting to happen.

I love this post for many reasons. You know I am really good in English language, when I read some books oe when I talked with people but when I wrotte in English I am not good, so I have to ask you to forgive me if sometimes confuzed you. First off all when I saw the name F. Scott Fitzgerald I felt so nice. The Great Gatsby is for me (and my wife) like the Bible. The best writting ever. A pitty for the book that the movie don catch the spirit. "The Roaring Twenties" give me nostalgic memories, when I was a child and any Sunday was my favourite day. They saw films with Cagney and Bogart. An excellent movie. The economy crash I am afraid that can be rising again, in my country we are in full time economical crisis.Thanks for this post.Honest,So long

Thank you, Don Corleone. You're mastery of English is just fine, congratulations. I love your line, "The Great Gatsby is for me (and my wife) like the Bible." I'm sure that would have warmed the heart of F. Scott, especially of his many fans. I agree it's hard to catch the spirit of his writing in movie adaptations of his books. Hemingway, too, but probably worse for Hemingway.

The troubled economy makes us all concerned, all over the world. I hope we can all help each other out of it.

The man who wrote the famed "Wall St. lays an egg" headline for Variety, Claude Binyon, became a screenwriter in the 1930s; his credits include "The Gilded Lily," "I Met Him In Paris" and "True Confession" (http://community.livejournal.com/carole_and_co/76563.html).

Bob the Bear - a picture book by my twin brother & Me

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Recent Comments on Past Posts:

It Happened to Jane is special to my family. My mother was selected to play the wife of Aaron Caldwell, the Chester town selectman in the movie and has a speaking part about the parking meter revenues gathered from outside his general store in the town center. My older brother was one of the cub scouts delivering coal donated by town residents to fuel Old 97. We grew up in Deep River. A few years ago a niece provided every member of music family copies of It Happened to Jane on DVD. The Connecticut River valley was truly an idyllic spot for growing up in the mid-Twentieth Century!

Thank you, the Lux Theatre broadcast was absolutely marvelous, and far superior, as you have indicated, the film. I have always admired Dorothy McGuire, and she has it all over Jean Peters. This is not as clear cut a differential between Joseph Cotton and Dan Dailey, but at this point in their grand careers, I will take Dan. Again thank you.

I jus watched this and I have to agree... the ending let me down. She left Howard Keel!!!! I've had a crush on him since seeing Seven Brides when I was 10.I did love the message that Rose Marie can be herself.But I'm still sad. Seriously, Rose Marie, you chose the wrong man.

My wife and I go back two decades for our love of “Remember the Night” and its heartwarming story...P.S. As I type these words I am reminded of the inscription my wife had engraved inside the wedding ring I now wear… “Remember The Night.”

Beautiful piece, Jacqueline, about yet another movie from the Unjustly Forgotten file. I agree a video release is decades overdue, (What is wrong with Universal Home Video? You'd think the only movies they ever made were monsters and Abbott & Costello. And don't even get me started on the pre-'48 Paramounts they're sitting on.) I count myself lucky to have scored a decent 16mm print on eBay some years back; otherwise it would have been a good 40 years since I saw it.

I happened upon this piece and wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed reading it. Really a great appreciation of a wonderful movie. Raoul Walsh is one of my favorite directors and this is the first of his movies I ever remember seeing--it was on the big screen back in 1952 so I guess that dates me but a movie like this was ideal for my age, both for the adventure and romance.

I guess I'm going to be busy reading all your blogs that touch on events I'm familiar with.

Judgement At Nuremberg caught my attention as I had the privilege of working in it for some 60 days. But more so as the German WWII history always recall my own trials during the war.

I suppose we filmed this around 1959-1960 which is not that long after the ending of the war. Reconstruction in Europe was far from accomplished. For the audience in 1961 this history was still a part of everyone's life.

I was overwhelmed sitting in that set and listening to the greatest actors of that generation orate day after day... an endless live theater.